


May It Please the Court

by elicitillicit



Series: Assorted Drabbles and Shorts [2]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Law School, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:51:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4897030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elicitillicit/pseuds/elicitillicit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has two windows open side-by-side on her screen at all times: one is a Facebook chat box with someone named Pansy who swears a lot and types almost exclusively in upper case, and the other is, on a rotating basis, either ASOS, Shopbop, or Amazon. She never pays attention when the professor is going through hypotheticals and picks all the easy questions to answer when he calls for suggested solutions. She can pronounce all the French that litters the ICJ judgments fluently, but he catches her Googling case summaries in the three instances that she has been cold-called.</p><p>She is, Percy decides, a liability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May It Please the Court

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Provocative-Envy](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Provocative-Envy).



> Happy birthday, provocative-envy! xxx

Percival Ignatius Weasley can recite the headnotes of every case that has been on his reading lists for the past two years. He can name every lord benched in the Supreme Court, the Privy Court, and the fucking Senior Courts of England and Wales from 1993 onwards. He can, upon given a set of facts, reason the judgment out the exact way that the leading judgment did it (albeit only about seventy two per cent of the time, but that’s still a pretty decent hit rate).

Tl;dr: Percy Ignatius Weasley knows a whole lot.

What he _doesn’t_ know, however, is _which forgotten but definitely evil deity_ that he might have offended in order to have landed _Daphne Princess Greengrass_ as his partner for this moot court module. This _only five people out of forty get As_ module. This _doubles as the selection trials for the Jessup team_ module.

This _Daphne is probably taking because it involves a field trip to the Hague_ module.

(It’s quite probable. He sits behind her in class and she’s been surfing through _Tripadvisor_ looking for sights to see. She has an actual _Excel sheet_ that she’s titled “Nether Say Netherlands”.)

She has two windows open side-by-side on her screen at all times: one is a Facebook chat box with someone named Pansy who swears a lot and types almost exclusively in upper case, and the other is, on a rotating basis, either ASOS, Shopbop, or Amazon. She never pays attention when the professor is going through hypotheticals and picks all the easy questions to answer when he calls for suggested solutions. She can pronounce all the French that litters the ICJ judgments fluently, but he catches her Googling case summaries in the three instances that she has been cold-called.

She is, Percy decides, a _liability._

He tries to keep his calm, he really does – there is nothing tackier than leaning into the whole _gingers have tempers_ trope – but he almost pitches a hissy when his name is read out together with hers and she flashes him the sweetest, most hopeful smile that he’s ever seen grace the face of an actual flesh-and-blood person and _not_ a statue of the Madonna.

That is, the mother-of-Jesus-H-Christ Madonna. Not uncomfortably-stripping-Justin-Timberlake Madonna.

During their first meeting before the deadline for the preliminary draft of their written submissions, Percy damn near bursts a blood vessel when she asks where _exactly_ Ruritania is on the world map. She furrows her precisely plucked eyebrows and widens her delicately winged Cambridge-blue eyes and she looks like she legit has _no fucking idea_ that Ruritania is as artificial as the sugar in the cheerful red can of Coca-Cola that she’s got condensing all over a hardcover edition of _Cheshire, Fifoot and Furmston’s Law of Contract_. But, _but_ – there’s a gleam in her eye that hints at a test that a very small, extremely subconscious part of Percy is uneasily certain that he’s failing.

He drops in at the university bar and eavesdrops on various conversations until he learns that she’s the eldest daughter of some obscenely rich and oddly obscure property developer and that her hair is insured for ten thousand pounds. He then promptly leaves, fifteen quid poorer and extremely disgruntled. He doesn’t know if that last piece of gossip is true (because _what_ , does that even _happen_ outside of _Mean Girls_?), but since it’s _Daphne_ , he wouldn’t be shocked if it is.

At their second meeting, he turns up with a complete skeletal outline of their answer (with alternative arguments colour-coded according to relevance), the _entire_ Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (bound and tabbed), and thirty-one cases on border disputes between ex-colonial territories.

Daphne brings her eleven-inch MacBook Air and a venti hojicha latte to the table.

She smiles amiably as he goes through his skeletal point by point, and he tries not to show how flustered he is with _actual irritation_ at how he’s basically pulling all the weight for this module. His frustration has _nothing_ to do with how the dark, glossy mauve of her lipstick makes her skin look even more flawless than it usually is, or how her hair is golden and gleaming and smells like flowers and spring and _strawberries_. It also has absolutely nothing to do with how she’s casually (and almost certainly _accidentally_ ) destabilising and unsettling and basically _unravelling_ some of his reasoning ( _but does sovereignty_ really _require recognition, or is that just a practical formality?_ ) before leaving the meeting early to go for a yoga class. He wants to ask her if she’s aware that she’s been flashing him a lot of her chest while she was leaning over his arm to read his work, but she disappears before he can decide if he should say _breasts_ or _boobs_ or _tits_.

Instead of doing his Equity and Trusts readings for the following week, Percy trawls through the Cheltenham Ladies’ College website archives in an attempt to find out if she’d done well enough to have her A’level grades posted on the internet. The exam results page refuses to load, so he gives up and navigates through the co-curricular activities and sports sections. He unearths a picture of a make-up free and unaccountably smug-looking Daphne hefting a tennis cup and wonders, inappropriately, if she’s the sort of player who _grunts_.

The thought comes from _way_ out of the blue and it’s random enough to stop him in his tracks and cause him to slam his laptop shut in disgust. He’s _Percy Weasley_. He doesn’t _do_ random thoughts and he’s _way_ past puberty. Way. Past. He most certainly isn’t comparing the photo of her with his recollection of the real thing and meditating on whether they’d airbrushed the light dusting of pale freckles over her nose and cheekbones out or if the picture’s resolution just wasn’t high enough to capture them.

He is _not_.

So, why, he asks himself despairingly, _why_ is he looking out the little window of the study room overlooking the corridor every six seconds in order to catch sight of Daphne’s approach? Why is he compulsively adjusting his glasses so that they sit _perfectly_ square on his _super closely shaved_ face? Why did he bother with this ridiculous paisley-print button down shirt that Ginny had assured him is _fashionable_ and _makes (him) look fit_?

To his everlasting and unmitigated horror, this chain of questions elicits an actual _wail_ from the depths of his being, and he dramatically smacks his forehead down onto the stack of textbooks that he's got stacked neatly in front of him. The fallout from this is exacerbated by the fact that while he is distracted by his distress, Daphne chooses to materialise.

She sets a can of Red Bull down inches from his ear and he’s sure that he hears her muffle a giggle as she sets her distressed leather Balenciaga bag down and slides an ominously thick stack of paper towards him. Percy sits up rapidly, trying to regain some measure of dignity, and frowns as he examines her offerings. “What’s this?”

“Red Bull,” she replies, languidly booting up her laptop. “You might need a boost of energy after all that moaning.”

He scowls and tries not to dwell on the double entendre that he’s sure is deliberate. “I meant the forest that you’ve sacrificed.”

Daphne doesn’t even blink. “They’re notes for the module from last year’s Jessup team. I also just sent you a soft copy of them. I believe that an outlined solution to issue six can be found in the ninth chapter – that’s page three hundred and ninety-four in the PDF document.”

He schools his expression into something that is _hopefully_ disapproving. “Using others’ notes takes away from the intellectual achievement of doing the work yourself.”

She makes a dismissive sound in her throat and Percy tries not to look too obviously at the way a smirk is tugging at her lips. “We’re still going to be doing _plenty_ of work, Weasley. But this way, we get a shortcut and a better shot at reaching Washington next semester.”

Percy opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. “We?”

Daphne shrugs. “You’re intelligent enough. I think we’d be good together on the Jessup team. Your drafting is solid, even if your arguments are predictable and occasionally one-dimensional. But that’s why we’re a _team_.” In the gobsmacked silence that follows, she glances over at him appraisingly ( _have her eyes_ always _been that clear?)_ and quirks an eyebrow. “Also, I like your shirt.”

Percy blames what happens next on a lack of sleep, too much caffeine, and the infuriatingly challenging tilt of Daphne’s chin when her eyes linger a heartbeat too long over the stretch of fabric spanning his shoulders.

While she doesn’t seem surprised at his sudden and reckless lunge across the table, he notes, with no small amount of satisfaction, that her fingers clutch almost greedily at his collar and she lets a breathless, quiet moan escape into his mouth before she commences kissing him back.

“You’re so _dense_ ,” she murmurs, teeth sharp against his bottom lip, and for all the blood pumping in his ears, Percy can hear her voice reverberating in his bones. “Promise me that you’ll try to be a little sharper at Jessups, mm? I’d rather not lose points just because you’re too oblivious to see them.”

Percy pulls away just enough to look her in the eyes, and he finally reads the amusement that’s been dancing in them for the past six weeks. She smiles her Madonna smile again, and instead of being irritated, Percy feels his heart do a little awkward flop onto its side (like a cat that’s just decided that it’ll give in to a belly rub). He wants to say a lot of things but he figures, what the _hell_ , she probably knows. Daphne probably knows everything, and the things that she doesn’t bother with are probably not particularly important anyways. So he settles for kissing her again on the tip of her daintily freckled nose before turning back to his work. Their work. _Theirs._

“Page three hundred and ninety-four, you said?”


End file.
